December 2013 (Gun room renovation and Christmas Preparations)

Once we got back from Thanksgiving break, we got to work on the laminate floors in the gun room/man cave.  Andy did most of the laying down, but I actually did a lot of the cutting.  I'm pretty good with a chop saw if I do say so!
 
 
This corner was a bit tricky, but it looks better than this now.
 
 
I love to make gifts for Christmas!
  I made a few felt doll folders for our younger nieces.
 
I made some necklace holders for Andy's 2 older nieces.
 
 
Then I made a quilt for Andy.  It was my first quilt, but I got some pointers from my mom and mother-in-law.  Andy had these old towels/flags from his mission in Brazil and a trip to Mexico.  Since we are going to England, I added some strips of English material.  This quilt will represent all the countries Andy has been to, except Ireland.  It is to be used in his man cave.
 
 
At the Blue Mountain Hospital Christmas Party, we shared a table with our neighbor and friend, Robert.  They were trying to build the tallest tower.
 
 
 For Christmas, we went to my mom's house in Covington, WA.  We arrived on Wednesday, December 18th.  The next day Mom was working, so we went and visited with my friend, Alisa.  We became good friends in the 1 1/2 years that I lived in WA after my mission and before BYU.
 
 
 
That night we went over to my brother, Brian's house.  Kiera became instant buddies with Andy even though she hadn't seen him for more than a year.  She also lost a tooth, and she was super excited to show it off.
 
 
On Friday night, Trisha arrived with her family.  The kids loved playing on the air mattress.  Ava and Mya were bouncing Eli like crazy!
 
 
Eli was laughing at himself for being clever enough to put his binki in wrong.  Too cute!
 
 
I insisted that we do a lot of the Christmas activities that I loved to do as a kid.  That included cutting making and decorating sugar cookies.
 
 
 
 
We also did team building activities like building graham cracker houses...one adult with each child.
I really enjoyed this bonding time with Kiera, since I hadn't seen her for awhile.
 
 
It was chaotic, but a ton of fun.
 
 
Photo bomb by Liam, my crazy and loveable nephew.
 
 
My friend, Sonja, and her husband, Jordan, stopped by for a visit during all the chaos.  I also met her when I lived in WA, but we also got to hang out at BYU. 
 
 The first night we arrived in WA, we bought a new bed for the guest bedroom.  Mom and Bill like to store food storage under it, so Bill and Andy worked on raising it.  Then Andy built a step to get up onto it.  Jeremy helped him carpet it.  Too bad I didn't take a picture of the finished product.
 
 

One day, a friend of Andrew dropped off this handcart and some other wood for my parents.  I think mom is going to put a flower garden in it.
 

I also made sure that I got plenty snuggling time with Eli.
 
 
During this week both Andy and Brian got some sort of stomach flu, so they missed out on the day outing to the temple.  I didn't get a picture in front of the temple because it was raining...big surprise.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We had a "CRATER" honeymoon than you!

Image
We stayed in Midway, UT for the first 2 nights of our honeymoon. Around our little Swiss get away, were all of these little crater pond things. You can see our little cottage in the background of this picture. On Monday we went to the Crater at Homestead. The water is warm and very blue. Many people go scuba diving here, but we just swam around. Ok, so I didn't swim too much. I more of just floated around. They make you wear a life jacket, which meant I got to just relax. I was so relaxed that I even look dead in this picture. We had a nice woman in a wheelchair take a picture of us. She took a lot more than one. She kept telling us to do something different. I decided not to put all of the pictures on here. She really wanted to take one of us in the tunnel. Here we are outside of the tunnel. Once we changed, we got into the car and headed up to Yellowstone. We spent Tuesday seeing the sights in Yellowstone. Within minutes we had to stop because there were some bison in t...
Read more

My Engagement Story

Image
In order to tell the story of our engagement, I will have to first tell you the story of our first date. For those of you who don't know, Andy and I were set up on a blind date by my Aunt Mary and Uncle Fred (more Mary). We met on August 27th when he picked me up for our date. Andy was well prepared for our first date. He planned on going up to canyon for a picnic and walking around the falls. He even had picked up some yummy sandwiches, but I didn't know about that then. Well, it happened to be raining that day, so he gave me the option of going to this authentic pizza place. I chose that plan since it was raining. We went to the pizza place where I ate pizza with corn on it for my first time. After dinner he started driving me back home, and then he noticed that it had stopped raining. We decided to try the canyon anyways. We went up to Canyon Glen and started walking the trail towards Bridal Veil Falls. For those of you who know me well, you know that I can easil...
Read more

July 2025 - Independence and Friends.

Image
July 4 - Parade time!  The usual, candy, chats with neighbors and lots of fun.  After dinner that night, we went to the Melodrama with Rob and Mallory Lyman.  They came and spent the weekend of the 4th with us. It was fun to have friends over and talk, but the kids struggled with not having alone time.   Sunday July 6 - When we got home from church we couldn't find Goldie, but we found blood stains on the driveway and front steps.  After a few minutes she came to Melissa with a big wound in her front leg.  She'd been out while we were at church and someone shot her in the leg.  She must have been bothering other animals.  We got the bleeding stopped with styptic powder and pressure, then Melissa spent most of the afternoon snuggling her to keep her from licking it.  I took her to the vet the next day, they left the bullet/pellet in the leg and just gave her a week of antibiotics. Melissa loved how calm and snuggly she was all day Sunday,...
Read more